In recent years, there has been a tendency toward thinner steel plates in order to reduce weights of vehicles like automobiles. Such a tendency for thinning is accompanied by lower rigidity of steel plates. Thinned steel plates are more liable to transmit unevenness of traveling surfaces as well as vibration and noise of engines. Under the circumstances, a proposal has been made to employ resin sheets to compensate for the rigidity of steel plates or resin sheets to damp vibration or the like (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).
Another proposal has also been made to employ an apparatus for stripping off release paper attached to an adhesive sheet having a reinforcing resin layers and for automatically joining the adhesive sheet to a lateral outside plate of an automobile such as an engine hood and a door. Such an apparatus joins the adhesive sheet as follows.
A transport mechanism of a robot suction-holds and places the adhesive sheet having a predetermined shape on a carrier plate. The transport mechanism sandwiches the adhesive sheet with the carrier plate. A separator, which is larger than the adhesive sheet, protrudes from the carrier plate. Accordingly, the separator is gripped by paired movable pieces provided with a stripping unit. Under such a condition, the separator is stripped from the resin layer while arms of the stripping unit swing downwardly. In synchronization with this stripping, the adhesive sheet suction-held by the transport mechanism is moved horizontally toward the exterior of the carrier plate. The adhesive sheet having the separator stripped off is transported to a workpiece, and the adhesive sheet is joined to the workpiece with a brush roller (see, for example, Patent Literature 2).
[Patent Literature 1] Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-139218A
[Patent Literature 2] Japanese Patent Application No. 2014-056587